different names for the same thing
by pengiechan
Summary: "It doesn't matter who I was. The only thing that matters is who I am now." A nameless woman becomes real again. Manga based, implied AyumuxHiyono, oneshot. A suggested companion piece to endroll.


I don't know where this came from. But it came, and seized me, and shook me about in its grasp until I wrote it all down in a single ten minute sitting.

A suggested companion piece to endroll, but not required reading. It works on its own, or explains a small, untouched piece of that story. You may choose.

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><p>"I need a favor."<p>

It isn't a question - because she doesn't dare ask for a favor, doesn't give him room to object. She faces him, out of breath, her hands pressed to the closed door of Narumi Ayumu's hospital room and her back pressed against her hands. He looks down at her, brown eyes widened in surprise, and for a moment she would like to slap that look off of his face. But she would, she thinks, slap any look off of his face, because she still hates him.

He opens his mouth, closes it, and opens it again. "What is it?" he asks.

"I want you to change my name."

"What?"

"I want you," she repeats, slowly, as if he is deaf, "to change my name."

Kiyotaka stares. She thinks that this is the first time she has seen this man at a complete loss for words, and wonders if she should be proud or simply annoyed. He slowly tucks his hands into the pocket of his suit coat, looking over her shoulder for a moment - as if he can see into the room through the closed door - and then he leans slightly towards her, frowning. "Why?"

"You owe me." She says it simply, almost carelessly, and again he stares. She realizes that he hasn't been expecting this. But she also realizes, and her lips twitch into a faint smile, that he knows nothing of what has transpired between his younger brother and this girl who was once a spy. _He knows so little, doesn't he?_ "And you owe him," she adds, nodding, "for using me against him."

"This isn't like you," he murmurs, and she knows he is right - but it is necessary, and perhaps he realizes this, because he doesn't press her any further. "Well," he begins, and his tone becomes more like the typical jovial, joking Narumi Kiyotaka, god of mysteries and puppets and gears, "what would you like your name to be?" His right hand slips out of his pocket, and he holds a notepad and pen - always prepared, this man. "I can call in a few favors, of course. But the change will be irreversible - "

"I realize that." She nods, again, slowly. "And that is my intention."

His fingers flip the pad open to an empty page, and the pen lifts itself in his fingers, poised, over the paper. "Well?"

The name forms itself easily on her lips. It is familiar, an old friend, perhaps an obsession. "Yuizaki Hiyono."

He drops the pen. She watches him, bemused, as he bends to retrieve it from the tiled floor of the hospital hallway, his long brown hair swinging into his eyes and obscuring his expression. She wonders if the action was intention, and feels certain that it had been when he rises, his face blank. "I picked a name you liked, I suppose," he jokes, but there is no humor in his words. He writes the characters carefully on the paper, turns it to show her - yes, it is perfect, written correctly - and then slips the pad into his pocket again. "Are you doing this for Ayumu?" he asks, as if he would be asking_ how's the weather today?_ or another pointless question for the sake of conversation.

But she won't give him the honor of that answer. She won't give him anything else, in fact, more than she has already given him - years of service doing his bidding, months spent by the side of a boy now fighting for his life in a hospital bed; a boy, almost a man, who she yearns for with her whole heart, feels true feelings for. _It was never a lie_, she told him earlier, and all he simply said was_ I know_. But she won't answer Kiyotaka. He doesn't deserve to know.

The hallway is quiet. She looks up at him, unmoving, grasping her hands tighter together behind her back. And when she doesn't speak, he does, his words tinged with something that might be frustration. "What about your current name?"

"Delete it. Replace it. She never existed."

"What about - " he starts, then stops, turning his head away with a frown. There is a pause before he finishes his thought, perhaps reluctantly. "You would so easily throw away your life for Ayumu's sake?"

"I'm not throwing anything away. Don't you see?" She turns her head, her cheek pressing to the door, and listens for any sound of the resident inside the room. He is sleeping, breathing loudly, and all at once she longs to touch him again, to pass her hands through his hair, to listen to him breathe out vague thoughts and sweet, half-sensible comments that might as well be a confession of love. "It doesn't matter who I was. The only thing that matters is who I am now."

He gives her an incredulous look and she confirms it: yes, she would slap any look off of his face, and her hands ache to strike him, her throat aching to scream words of hatred and anger. But she knows that she is right, that she has won, and that he will do what she has asked him to - and so nothing else is needed. "Yuizaki Hiyono," he repeats, and sighs in defeat. "Alright. I'll take care of it. But if Ayumu asks - "

She smiles. "If Narumi-san asks, I'll tell him you had nothing to do with it."

"Will he believe you?"

"It doesn't matter." She turns, her arms dropping, and slides open the door, staring across the room at the figure of a sleeping teenager. "All that matters is that you do this for me. Ne?" And she gives him a happy look - a Yuizaki Hiyono kind of look - over one shoulder before she steps into the room and shuts the door in his face.


End file.
